Race to the Top: Hopefully, state learns lesson from latest defeat

That was Gov. Ed Rendell's verdict upon learning that Pennsylvania failed, again, to win a federal grant in the program called Race to the Top.

The state had hoped to land $400 million of the total $3.3 billion in Race to the Top funding, designed to promote a raft of reforms. Instead, the money went to 10 other states, including our neighbors Ohio, New York and Maryland.

Rendell is partly correct.

Pennsylvania required each district to win the approval of the district superintendent, plus the presidents of the school board and local teacher's union. Most other states only required the superintendent to sign on.

"They submitted applications that they simply can't live up to," Rendell said.

But that's not the whole story. In large part, Pennsylvania's failure to win the grant was our own fault.

First, the state neglected to pass an alternative certification law that would encourage people from other fields to become teachers. One of the keys to the success of Harrisburg's Sci-Tech High has been the teachers who formerly were engineers and scientists and businesspeople. They bring real world experiences that make for vivid lessons.

The state Legislature was trying to pass an alternative certification law, but when Sen. Jeff Piccola, R-Dauphin County, attached an amendment that would have kept Mayor Linda Thompson in charge of the Harrisburg schools longer, it created differences with the House version and the bill ran aground.

Rendell said that was a "big stumbling block" in Pennsylvania's shot at $400 million.

The state Legislature also has failed to enact comprehensive merit pay for teachers such as Race to the Top winners Florida and North Carolina.

Merit pay is controversial and there is evidence to fuel both sides of the debate. But taxpayers are demanding that schools improve, and the fact is that they overwhelmingly want to try merit pay as one tool.

A recent Harvard University poll found that those surveyed supported basing teachers' salaries, in part, on their students' academic progress by 2-to-1.

The same poll found, unsurprisingly, that teachers opposed the idea by more than 2-to-1.

And that leads to the final reason we lost the race for money.

With Pennsylvania, rightly, requiring each district's teacher union to be onboard, only 122 of the state's 500 school districts endorsed Race to the Top reforms.

We were more honest than other states. A school district needs buy-in from everyone - administrators, teachers, parents and even students - if reforms are to work.

But just because we were honest doesn't mean we were right.

Now is the time for the teachers to recognize the public's demand for change and engage with lawmakers to craft reforms they can support.

As Sen. Piccola observed, ultimately this wasn't about $400 million.

It was about the fact that other states are ahead of us - not in the race for money but in the desire to innovate and create more effective schools. And the real losers were the students.